AI with humans in mind: The importance of human behavioural considerations in AI design and adoption

It is essential to design technology not just with security in mind but with a recognition of the essential tenets of human behaviour. Humans are the core of every societal system and designing technology without understanding the biological and psychological realities of implementing that technology is a critical error. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is designed to mimic human thinking and decision-making so designing it with the practicalities of human cognition and trust at the forefront is essential. Applying AI to cyber security can have massive benefits. However, solutions that do not consider the human element but rather just implement new AI for the art of it tend to have troublesome consequences and clash with user behaviour. In order to affect lasting change in security operations, especially via the implementation of AI to problem-solve and increase efficiency, it is critical that the AI techniques leveraged are designed around the realities of human behaviour and psychological realities. This paper explores psychological realities such as cognitive biases, reactions to stress and crisis and implicit trust in technology, how they can be made worse if technology, especially AI technology, is not designed with those realities at the forefront and how AI can instead be built to complement human behaviour. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.